To think there's still that teeny weeny bit of a pandemic thing happening?

[IAmOldNow]

Not complaining, just observing:

Figures say: cases rising, hospitalisiations rising, fatalities: flat at best but if anything that'll be thanks to large scale immunisation, largely due to vaccines that may not prevent infection altogether but are, largely, proving to be pretty good at making sure the vast majority of us don't end up on a ventilator and/or: dead!

Currenrt reality says: huge client party tonight. Cue some 3k people crammed into a mostly indoors space, free alcohol, hugging, air kissing, any old thing you'd imagine from people who, literally, know and do not actively hate each other and haven't met in the flesh for two years.

AIBU to think that this is a) human and understandable but also b) bound to see 1/3 of the organisation out cold with COVID within a week?

For the record: I don't know the right answer! I went, too!

My dad died of covid recently. He went into hospital for something unrelated, caught it and died. He was healthy enough before he went in- wasn't clinically vulnerable or even that old. He caught it a week after the hospital celebrated being 'mask free' and what a great milestone that was. I agree that things should be back to 'normal' but there are some environments where sadly these things will still happen, but should be something in place to try and reduce the risk.

Well did you think covid was going to be eradicated?

What exactly did people think would happen?

That we could introduce a few completely ineffective restrictions and it would be gone?

The impacts of said ineffective restrictions that have caused more harm overall than the virus?

The risk of the virus no longer warrant restrictions (if it ever did)

So yeah. We might as well get on with it.

I've given up stressing. Fed up of saying no to things "just in case"

So far have been on 4 planes. Big Disney holiday in loads of crowds. Trip into Paris.

A few times in mega crowded London Underground. Lots of cinema/theatre.

Day trips to busy theme parks and zoos and soft plays etc.

When I caught it was from a family member I gave a lift to.

I suppose my question back to you is

"If this is life with a vaccine, what more do you want before life goes back to normal?"

*@DappledThings I think you've missed the point of the post you quoted.

For you who were lucky enough to keep your nursery place, things were pretty normal. This is the main reason that teachers are nursery staff were worried about working because they did still cuddle the kids etc.*
No, that is my point. Lots of us were very lucky but there seems to be this prevailing narrative that all children had a terrible time of it and that nobody had a normal time. I think leaving that unchallenged means those that are rightly worried about could potentially receive less support because all children are seen as needing specialised support and therefore those who do need it receive less.

The restrictions were brought in to flatten the curve which it did ,they explicitly said Covid itself would be around for along time maybe forever ,vaccines were the game changer in all of this.

Same here.

I pay Covid almost zero attention now. I'm relieved that it has almost dropped out of the news now too and life is thankfully back to normal. I'm triple vaccinated and will be amongst the age group offered boosters this autumn. I also had Covid back in April.

Life needs to go on. Covid is going nowhere. We have to live with it and really, now we are.

I'm always amazed by how few humans seem to be able to operate in a grey area of nuance. It doesn't have to be 'everything as it was in 2019' or 'lockdown'. There is a middle ground

There isn’t ‘a’ middle ground, though. There is a huge huge range of potential middle grounds. We are already in one - the culture of some people wearing masks in shops, or of wedding guests being asked to take tests they can buy from Boots to make sure they’re not asymptomatic carriers of a particular virus, that isn’t back to 2019.

You want a specific middle ground which trades off the things you want to keep against the restrictions you don’t mind having. Which is fine for you, but it isn’t like your preferences are some objectively most sensible thing to do. To some people your preferences will look like not enough, to some it’ll look too much.

And people will use their own likes and dislikes and their own circumstances to decide what they think is ‘sensible’, without seeing how it falls on everyone else. (Personally, as someone who relies on public transport, I get a bit fed up of people saying “ah yes OBVIOUSLY we should keep masks on public transport” when they drive everywhere and wouldn’t be affected - same as how “we need masks in shops, it’s not HARD” sounds different if you’re just popping in for 15 minutes to if you’re doing a 9-hour shift there as an employee. Or “better ventilation!” can sound less like an easy win when your business would have to pay to have it installed at a time of rising costs everywhere when you’re struggling to keep afloat, or pay for ongoing electricity costs of running air purifiers when power costs are going through the roof.)

So it’s not that nobody wants nuance. It’s that people have, reasonably enough, different starting positions and therefore ideas about what nuance looks like.

I think the message I would like people to get is just because you had it mildly once it doesn't mean it will be mild the next time and I assume it is also possible to have it really badly once and mildly next time.
As I said earlier on I had it once with no symptoms, literally nothing, and then I got it badly and it turned into pneumonia and six months later I still have symptoms.
I hope if I get it a third time it will be like the first time but who knows.
I know so many people who had it mildly and it has made them quite blase about it and I hope they don't share my experience.
I have had 3 jabs and the funny thing is my very vulnerable disabled husband didn't get it. I spent two years trying to protect him!

I'm more aware of hand hygiene and still use hand sanitiser but I can't say that I worry about it too much.

I completely agree. I know families who had a lovely time during the first lockdown. There was a vast range of experiences.

But I do take issue with @DappledThings suggestion that it just wasn't a big deal for primary aged kids:

Must have been horrendous for a lot of teenagers and tiny babies missed out on some early socialising and baby groups but for those who were nursery/primary age it wasn't that big a deal in my experience.

There was a significant drop in national SATs results this year due to the lost learning.

Interestingly Reading data improved in SATS, Maths went down. You can tell what parents preferred/or were able to do with their children during lockdown

Thank you to posters like Blahspoons & SugarPlumFairy - I'm very much on your page. It's fantastic that life is back to much as it was pre-pandemic now - I've just enjoyed a twice postponed holiday, including visiting busy indoor attractions. However, my family and I readily elected to take a few precautions to maximise our chances of not getting ill during it or inadvertently passing it on to others.

I honestly don't think it's much to ask that we, as a society, recognise that there are a few simple steps we can all choose to take to do this - steps that, if there were universal acceptance of them, would enable the hundreds of thousands still shielding to join us in returning to live THEIR lives, as well. Respecting a friend's polite request to take 5 minutes to test before a funeral, or electing to wear a mask when health & heat permit for a short journey on a busy underground train sat next to an elderly person, are such simple, easy actions for most of us. Not everyone, no, but most people eg. wearing a seatbelt / driving at 30 is enough to enable all of us to drive reasonably safely.

The fact no one - including our government - wants to acknowledge is that, for hundreds of thousands of people, Covid is still, quite simply, a killer, and many of these people are continuing to shield. For others, a multitude of personal reasons shape their own perceptions of risk - mental health / a recent bereavement sharpening their horror at the prospect of another loss / a personal health history they shouldn't have to make public as a justification for their caution...

In the light of this, two things confuse and - quite honestly - distress me about the ways in which we're emerging from Covid in the UK.

1. In a society in which we're, at long last, so sensitively attuned to protecting minority and discriminated-against groups (BLM, Me Too, Pride etc.), how can it be that the physically and mentally vulnerable who continue to suffer deeply under Covid are so easily, so absolutely, dismissed? If we were to normalise, on a country-wide level, the personal choice to take a few simple precautionary steps every-so-often - just as we've normalised so many other positive behaviours to protect other vulnerable groups - we could, quite literally, transform these people's lives. And yet such suggestions are emphatically dismissed, or seen as fundamentally unreasonable. We respect so many other states, circumstances & needs, and yet - for example - friends and acquaintances who request we take 2 minutes to test are seen as making an unreasonable demand (unless they - presumably?! - justify it by publicising a hidden aspect of their personal health history or publishing their future plans to visit an elderly CEV person etc.?)

2. On this note, why-oh-why is there SUCH strength of feeling in response to such requests or suggestions about how the majority of us could take a few simple steps to protect the vulnerable? Counter-arguments against this so often rely on hyperbole (eg. about protective measures needing to be all-or-nothing, or making someone "miserable", or even imagined traumatic childhoods!) I find it very telling that we simply don't tend to hear anything like such hyperbole from the people who are, in very many cases, still having to live under quite genuinely life-limiting circumstances - circumstances pretty much unthinkable to those resentful of the odd swab request.

The fact is that, for hundreds of thousands of people still, Covid simply isn't like a cold, because a) Due to their health status, it's a killer, pure and simple & b) It's consistently rife in a way no similar diseases are, & likely to remain so.

And we don't hear anything from them. Or about them. They've been forgotten.

What does that say about us as a society?

Other liberal-minded countries show there are different ways.

You're right about reading actually, but drops in maths and writing. You're probably right that parents found it easier to support reading than maths and SPAG.

inews.co.uk/news/education/sats-results-2022-national-ks2-scores-slump-1723860

@CEVPeopleExist

The simple answer is people either don't agree with the risk assessment or the effectiveness of the 'measures'

I wear a seatbelt because all the evidence shows its necessary and effective.

On this note, why-oh-why is there SUCH strength of feeling in response to such requests or suggestions about how the majority of us could take a few simple steps to protect the vulnerable?

Because there isn't any evidence that 'simple' measures make any difference to omincron transmission and these 'simple' measures aren't actually cost free for society when scrutinised.

The cost / benefit assessment of seatbelts is very obvious. Mask wearing (non medical) not so much.

So true. And some of these small steps, as well as helping protect the vulnerable, would also help ease the pressure on the NHS. Waiting lists are just awful at the moment with little sign of things improving.

Other liberal-minded countries show there are different ways.

Again, what countries are you talking about and what restrictions do they have?

@mocktail

would also help ease the pressure on the NHS.

How?

Just read GoldenOmber's post above - good points, all. I think my feeling, though, is that, nationally, collectively, we could change the national mood (is that the right word? probably not) in relation to making a personal choice to take some simple measures when we feel able to do so. I agree that we're probably past the period of enforced restrictions, but there's a huge gulf between the current reality - the odd person wearing a mask in a shop, the friend being seen as weird for asking people to test without clear reasons - & an alternative reality in which people have just the same freedoms, but PERCEIVE such measures differently, taking them when they feel able to do so out of a sense of social responsibility, empathy & kindness, as opposed to, predominantly, seeing them as utterly unreasonable / downright bizarre. They're neither.

@CEVPeopleExist

Its only your opinion the requests aren't unreasonable

Others disagree

The KeatingFive - see my response above to GoldenOmber, as this is exactly it - I'm an expat in a country in which there are very few restrictions if any, but people PERCEIVE Covid differently. There's a respect for other people's concerns & decisions - an empathy a recognition that they have their reasons & these are probably good reasons - that is largely absent in the UK (having just spent 2 months there over summer). The different in public perception of what Covid can do to a minority still living under desperately difficult conditions of necessity is immense, and it makes society feel... kinder... free-er for ALL here.

Maybe that ‘driving at 30mph’ is a better comparison than seatbelts?

I don’t drive. I have a heath condition, that prevents me. So for me, as someone getting around on foot, 30mph in built-up areas is already annoyingly fast. 20mph would be better. 10mph for all non-work vehicles on all residential streets would be best. It wouldn’t really negatively impact me, and it would make it much easier and safer for me to get around. What’s someone else’s convenience at getting to Tesco four minutes faster against my safety in crossing the road?

BUT… we live in a society where we all need to compromise. So I wouldn’t seriously advocate a 10mph speed limit everywhere, or call people selfish and callous for not wanting to do it.